by West, Jade
Holy fuck, I stumbled backwards.
“You can’t be serious,” I challenged and stepped back closer. “You haven’t loved me for years. You’ve hated the sight of me for years…”
And that’s when I finally saw it in her eyes, the pain under the rage. The pain under the disgust. The pain under everything I’d ever been to her.
The shock was savage.
The shock was spiteful.
The shock tore me into shreds with a whole fresh round of guilt.
“You’ve never loved me!” she snapped, but her voice was weaker than I’d ever known. “I’ve been trying to make you love me for years, but you never have. Nothing I ever did was good enough, not even having Millie. So I wanted to show you. I tried to show you. Over and over and fucking over. Always trying to be good enough, but it never worked! Because you never believe, Lucas! You never believe there’s a bigger fate than the one you see in front of your smug face!”
My heart was beating a crazy tune, and the ground felt unsteady as it all came crashing in.
“Never believe in what bigger fucking fate, Maya? You hated me,” I countered. “You’ve hated everything I’ve done for years. I was the one who was never good enough!”
“Yeah, well, maybe I was trying to convince myself,” she hissed, and that pain was right there again.
And the reality took my breath.
Maybe she was trying to convince herself. Maybe she always had been.
Maybe the whole thing was one fucking endless pit of utter misery and carnage and nobody ever being fucking good enough.
But I’d married her.
I’d put that ring on her finger and promised to try.
I flinched as I heard Millie’s voice sound out from the hallway behind Maya. She called for her mummy, then she called for me, and my gut jumped right up into my throat.
“I’m taking her to Hampshire,” Maya hissed up close to the gap in the door. “Don’t even think about trying to stop me. You’re a fucking wreck, Lucas. Drinking and making a state of yourself and fucking someone else. I’m not having her seeing that. I’m taking her away now. You need to get your shit together if you want us to come back.”
“You can’t take her!” I hissed back. “This won’t solve anything, Maya. It’s just a bullshit excuse to punish me.” I paused. “You think I’m not hurting? You think I haven’t hurt as much as you have with every bitchy little dig that’s come out of your mouth for years?”
Her eyes flashed with rage all over again. “You haven’t hurt like I have, Lucas. And you haven’t hurt like Millie has as she’s watched her father give up on us without a fight.”
No.
Fuck no, that wasn’t true.
Millie hadn’t watched me give up on her without a fight.
I didn’t just let Maya walk away like it didn’t fucking matter. It was a battle that cycled over and over and over, one vile circle of hate and spite and pain that helped nobody.
I slammed up into the front door until my face was up close to Maya’s. “Don’t take Millie away from me. Seriously, Maya. Don’t you dare.”
“Then don’t you dare think about playing happily families with Anna fucking Blackwell, Lucas. Make your choice. You get back with us, or we’re staying away. You can decide while we’re gone, but we’re going this afternoon.” She paused. “Millie already knows we’re going, she’s excited to see everyone back in Hampshire. Don’t make this any harder on her than it has to be.”
“Daddyyyy.” Millie called again from inside, and it took my breath.
“I mean it,” Maya said. “Don’t make this hard on her. You decide what you want while we’re gone, but we’re going today.”
She slammed the door back shut before I could say any more and I didn’t know what the fuck to do. I pressed my forehead to the wood and knocked again but she didn’t answer. I wanted to pound the door so hard it tore from its hinges, but I couldn’t, not with Millie knowing it was me out there.
I heard her voice calling my name again from inside, and heard Maya shout something that sounded harsh. I pressed my ear tighter to the wood, close enough to hear the race of footsteps thumping up the stairs.
My eyes were already up at Millie’s bedroom window when I stepped back from the porch, and that’s where she appeared. Her favourite teddy bear was pinched tight under her arm as her hands pressed up at the glass, and she looked so sad and confused and scared that it tore me in two.
Please, no. Please God, anything but take Millie away.
I felt the sob catch in my chest as Maya appeared in the window behind our little girl. She tugged her away from the glass, but Millie’s eyes were still on me all the way.
I was still staring up at the empty space, breaths ragged in my chest when my phone vibrated in my pocket. My hands were shaking as I pulled it out and called up the message.
Maya.
Us or that slut, Lucas. You decide!
But I couldn’t decide.
How the fuck could I ever make that choice? How the hell could I ever face walking away from Anna all over again for someone I didn’t love?
I couldn’t.
But how the fuck could I put Millie through months of pain while I fought over her future with someone who’d never let me be happy?
I couldn’t.
Jesus Christ, I couldn’t.
For the first time in years I felt so torn apart that I retched my guts up all over the grass out by my truck. It was like reeling from that pregnancy test in Maya’s hand all over again with no sign of a way out.
I didn’t know what to do, so I went back up to the door and dropped down onto the front step. And I waited. I didn’t pound and I didn’t shout. I didn’t do anything but sit there on that doorstep to stop her from driving away.
Stalemate.
It was stalemate.
She texted again after hours of sitting in silence.
Fuck off, Lucas. I’ll just wait however long it takes until you leave. We’ll still be going to Hampshire.
Don’t take Millie to Hampshire, I texted back, and her response came back within seconds.
Us or her, Lucas. You decide. We’re going to Hampshire.
It was getting dark by the time I finally got to my feet and walked back down that garden path. My stomach was still twisting and my puke was still at the side of the truck, and the nausea was churning hard all over again.
And I needed someone. I needed someone to confess my mistakes to, and help me make sense of this madness, just like I had done back then with those two stripes on the pregnancy test.
Only this time it was different. This time it wasn’t my mother.
This time it was Anna.
Just like it should have been in the first place.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Anna
The night was cold and dark as I waited for Lucas at the end of my street. My legs felt weak and my heart felt broken all over again, even though it was still waiting to tear in two.
Still, all of that paled into nothing once his truck pulled up alongside me and I slipped into the passenger seat.
Lucas was destroyed.
His knee was tapping nervous as he drove, and even in the flash of the street lighting through the window he looked ashen. Ashen and broken. His eyes were sunken and his lip was a tight line, like he was trying to hold himself back from teetering over the edge.
But I guess that’s what you look like when your little girl is being torn away from you right across the country.
And I’d done this.
I’d done this with one random text message on one random Sunday morning. One random Sunday morning that may be costing him his daughter, and his family, and any shot at making this right again.
I waited for him to speak with my heart in my throat, because I just didn’t know what to say. We were both silent, the tension heavy enough to slice, and the roads turned to lanes, and those lanes started climbing, and we were up on the hilltop when he pulled into an
off road parking spot and turned off the ignition.
I felt physically sick at what was coming.
“I can’t face going home,” he said to me, and his voice was thick. “Beth and Wes left the dogs earlier, and I need to get back there tonight, but I can’t face it. Not yet.”
I waited for him to carry on.
“She’s taking her,” he said. “I tried talking to her, and I tried waiting, but it wouldn’t matter how long I stayed there, she’d just pack her off in the car as soon as I left.”
“So, she’s gone?” I asked. “She’s really taken her to Hampshire?”
He nodded. “I got a voicemail from my mother before I got to yours. She was screaming that Millie’s on her way down there.”
My own voice sounded so raw when I spoke again. “What happens now? Can you follow her down there? Can you ask her again to come back?”
He lit up a cigarette and put the window down before he answered. “She won’t come back until I do what she wants me to.”
I pulled a cigarette out of my own before I found the strength to ask the next question. “And what does she want you to do?”
I knew the answer before it came, but it still punched me in the heart.
“She wants me to choose, them or you.”
I managed a nod, but that was all. It took me a while to speak, and he was silent too. Both of us staring ahead at the lights of Lydney burning oblivious down below, taking deep drags of our cigarettes as we battled with the words.
I forced down the tears as I summoned my final statement.
“Then we’re done,” I said, “and it’s okay. It’s okay.”
He spun in his seat in a flash, shoulders hard in a way I didn’t expect. “What do you mean we’re done?”
I was glad the night was dark outside so he didn’t see how my eyes were filling. “I mean we have to be, Lucas. She’s your little girl, and you can’t risk it. And I get that, and it’s okay. We survived losing each other last time, right? We can do it again.”
He was shaking his head as I spoke. “No, Anna. That’s not it. We can’t be done.” He stubbed his cigarette out. “There has to be another way out of this. Maybe I can talk to her. Maybe over time she’ll be able to accept that we’ll never work, me and her. I mean, she’s hurting right now, and I didn’t see that, and I should’ve seen that, and I should’ve seen so many fucking things and I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter.” His eyes were hard on mine, even in the dark. “There’s got to be another way. There has to be a way we can make it through this. I mean, people have to come around to us, at some point they have to accept we’re together. Even Maya. Even your parents. Even Nicola fucking Henshaw. Right?”
I was shaking my head as the tears fell. Because there was no way out of this. There never would be.
“They have to!” he insisted. “Jesus, Anna, at some point they have to!”
But they wouldn’t. I forced my breath to stay steady as I found the words.
I told him how I’d spent the rest of the morning trying to tell Vicky the real, full story of just how and why he’d left me all those years ago. I told him how she’d scoffed at me and told me I was an idiot for believing the bullshit. I told him how I’d called Nicola over after and tried again with her and Vicky in the same room and got the same response.
They didn’t believe him, and they shook their heads at the fact that I had, and they didn’t believe anything other than he was a prick and us being together was one massive pool of shit I was wading around in.
I told him how Yasmin had come out to join me at girls’ night and was the only one with another opinion in the chaos, but even that didn’t matter to my friends. I’d asked Nicola and Vicky to go check with her that what Lucas had told me was true, but they brushed it aside as nothing and said she was already back up in Newcastle and barely in contact. Another great help from the universe.
I told him how the whole world was against us, and people would never buy into us being together, and that was obvious. Especially not the woman screaming for him to choose his future, me or them, and taking his little girl across country.
“Maybe Yasmin will be able to help us convince people, if she knows the truth,” he said, but I shook my head.
“That isn’t what I meant. What I meant is, it doesn’t matter that she does. It will never matter. Even if she screamed from the rooftops that Maya was a total bitch who deserved you coming back to me, they’d still be cursing and scowling and saying I’m an idiot and you need to get back to your little girl.”
“Stop it,” he said, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
“We’ll never make it,” I told him. “Seriously, Lucas. You can’t let her take Millie across the country. Whatever it takes. You have to make it right for Millie.”
“But I can’t!” he said, and his hands were right over on mine. “I can’t walk away from this, Anna. Not again. I can’t make that fucking choice!”
We sat in silence, because what could we say?
Maya and Millie were likely already holed up at her parents’ place, and I hadn’t even attempted to reason with my parents yet. Everyone was still determined I should get back with the man who’d pulled me up from the floor last time around, nursing me through nights of pissing in the bed and blanking out in random places and dropping down exhausted for hours. And even though my seizures weren’t down to Lucas, that would never be accepted by the people who’d helped me through them in those early days.
I’d been having seizures before he made his idiot mistake, and I’d been the one to let myself wallow, and cry, and work every hour of the day or night just to try to forget he existed. But it didn’t matter. They’d still be cursing him for plunging my brain into one long ping pong of misfiring.
But even that faded to insignificance with the other coal of doom burning in the fire.
Millie.
It was all about Millie.
He had a little girl who needed him to be there for her, whatever the cost, and she had to come first, no matter how much we wanted each other.
“You have to get to your daughter,” I said, and saw him flinch in his seat. “You know it as well as I do. You have to get to her.”
“There will be a way,” he replied. “I mean, Maya can’t keep her away from me without legitimate reason. Not in the long-term.”
“But she’ll try,” I said. “She’ll use anything she can, and it’ll take months, and battles, and court, and so much time without her before you get it fixed.”
He gripped the steering wheel and cursed, and I reached out to squeeze his hand.
“I can’t choose,” he said. “I can’t walk away from Millie, and I never would, but I can’t walk away from you either. Not again.”
“So what are you going to do?” I asked him. “Threaten Maya with legal action if she doesn’t come back? Split your time between Cheltenham and Hampshire? Do you really want it to get that aggressive between you?”
He didn’t answer, because he didn’t have an answer to give me. I forced my hand away from his and forced my breath into line, and then I straightened up.
“You need to think,” I said. “You need to drop me back at home, and then you need to think.”
He was shaking his head when I spoke. “No. Don’t walk away. Please don’t leave.”
But I was shaking mine right back. “This isn’t leaving,” I said. “The last thing I want is to leave, but you’ll never make a way through this while I’m sitting beside you. It’s too clouded.”
He slammed his hands on the steering wheel three times over. “This can’t! Be fucking! Happening!”
Oh, but it could.
It most definitely could.
“Take me home,” I said again. “Please, Lucas. You have to be objective in this, and that’s never going to happen here.”
My whole body was crying out to hold him tight and go back to his with him. I wanted to greet Bill and Ted, and lose myself in his beautiful filth, climb into bed in his arm
s, and count on the world outside coming around to us by some miracle, but it wouldn’t. Seeing Nicola and Vicky scoffing at the idea of Lucas making one night’s mistake and trying to be there for an unborn baby was more than enough to show me acceptance was nowhere near in sight. And that was without even beginning to comprehend how far Maya could hold Millie to ransom.
I said it again. “Take me home. Take me home and think.”
Finally, he relented.
He started up the truck and headed down from the hillside. My stomach was fluttering with butterfly sick all the way back into town, and my heart was a wreck as we pulled up in my street.
He grabbed my arm as I opened the passenger door, and his eyes were full of so much hurt it took my breath.
“Don’t leave me, Anna. I can’t make that choice, and I won’t. I’ll figure something out. We’ll figure something out together.”
I nodded, and tried to smile, but it was empty.
“I love you,” I said, and my voice hitched. “You know I love you, but you need to get Millie back and you know that too.”
I left the truck before he could say anything more, and I didn’t look back at him, just put my key in the lock and headed on in.
Vicky was in the living room as I walked on through, and she tried to talk to me, but I couldn’t speak, just headed on through to my bedroom. She knocked at the door and asked to come in, but I told her I needed my space. I forced my meds down and wiped my tears away in my dressing table mirror and wondered how the hell I was going to make it through work the next day.
I’d have to try.
I waited until I was pretty certain Vicky had gone to bed before I showered. There were messages from Lucas and missed calls when I came back to my bedroom, but I didn’t click to read them, because I couldn’t. He needed his time, even if he didn’t want it.
Sleep was hard.
Tossing and turning, and churning with nausea. I don’t know what time I managed to drift into some semblance of rest, but it didn’t do me any good.
My sheets were wet when I woke up, thighs drenched and tongue sore with how much I’d been chewing. I cried a fresh sob and stripped my bed, casting off horrible wet knickers and waiting, sitting in my own piss until the sound of Vicky’s shower eased off through the wall.